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Claire Denis in Talks to Direct Cannibal Crime Drama ‘The Soap Maker’ (EXCLUSIVE)


Claire Denis is in talks to direct ‘The Soap Maker,’ an elevated genre movie about a serial killer who cooked the bodies of her victims.

The project, being shopped around at Berlin’s EFM, is an updated remake of Italian director Mauro Bolognini’s 1977 cult movie “Gran Bollito,” which starred Shelley Winters as a serial killer who cooked the bodies of her victims into soap, cake and cookies. The English-language film is inspired by the true story of Italy’s Leonarda Cianciulli, who in the late 1930s and early ’40s murdered three local women in the central Italian town of Correggio and disposed of their bodies with chemicals — using what was left to make soaps, candles, cookies and cakes that she shared with people in her community. “The Soap Maker,” which is lead-produced by the Los Angeles- and New York-based Gerry Pass via his Chrome Entertainment shingle, is being packaged by CAA and has been pitched to prospective buyers at the EFM.

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